If there was anywhere George Brown didn’t want to be on April 15, 1872, it was Queen’s Park. If he’d been in his office at the Globe that day, he might have heard a few groans directed at him from a procession passing the paper’s King Street headquarters on its way to the park, where over 10,000 labourers, tradespeople, and their supporters had gathered to hear speeches about the ongoing printers’ strike, the fight for a nine-hour day, and the legal right to organize trade unions.
In the eyes of those who attended the rally, Brown’s actions and editorials against the printers and labour movements made him, for the moment, one of the least popular figures in the province.
George Brown was founder and editor of the Toronto Globe. (Library and Archives Canada DAPDCAP 19570)
At the time, the standard workday was 10 to 12 hours long. Efforts to reduce it had simmered on both sides of the Atlantic since the late 1860s, with calls for an eight-hour day in the United States and a nine-hour one in Great Britain. A Canadian Nine-Hour Movement emerged after a series of meetings among labour organizers in Hamilton in January 1872. Proponents argued the extra time would allow workers to improve their work skills through self-education and provide more opportunity to, in the words of organizer James Ryan, “cultivate social and domestic virtues.” Groups identifying themselves as “Nine-Hour Leagues” soon formed in cities and towns across Ontario, and there were hopes that these organizations might spawn a larger, coordinated labour movement across the country.
But there was a problem.
Technically, unionization was illegal. Canadian labour laws were based on British regulations, introduced in 1792, that viewed combinations of workers into a union as a criminal offence. While laws in Great Britain were revised several times to reflect the growing labour movement, these changes were never made in their North American possessions.
Nine-Hour Movement leaders, who had experienced some early successes in reducing the workday among employers in Hamilton, felt their cause was gaining momentum and began planning a series of demonstrations around the province in May and June. They held public meetings at which labour activists from the United States and Canada gave fiery speeches.
This wasn’t enough for the Toronto Typographical Union, which represented the city’s printers. Its members wanted action, not words. In early March 1872, TTU members voted in favour of requesting a 54-hour work week for the same total pay they received for working 60 hours or more. They also wanted to even out the pay rates between day and night workers. Publishers such as Brown felt night workers deserved higher pay because they were more skilled, put up with harsher working conditions, and had better attendance rates. Overall wages paid to Toronto printers were among the lowest in North America; workers received half what their peers earned in Chicago and New York.
While Brown had supported efforts elsewhere to shorten the workday, he had long believed his employees should bend to his paternalistic will. When two printers presented Brown with the TTU’s demands, he fired them.
As a strike vote loomed, Brown and 16 other book and newspaper publishers formed the Master
James Beaty was publisher of the Toronto Leader newspaper. (Toronto Public Library, Baldwin Collection)
Printers’ Association. They supported a 10-hour workday and separate rates for day and night printers — and were prepared to use whatever means necessary to break the union. In a March 22 Globe editorial, Brown declared that the MPA’s members were “determined to be masters of their own offices. They have submitted long enough to the insolent dictation of a few reckless lads … but they will do so no longer.”
Brown had more to say in the next day’s paper. “We believe that the man who has full steady employment for a length of time daily, not inconsistent with robust health and the discharge of family and public duties — who has occupation for every minute of the day — and who goes home to his wife at night with the glad consciousness that he has done a good day’s work, and added to the comforts of his household, is a far better, healthier, happier man than his neighbour who has one or two hours daily of idle time to consume.” He denied the existence of a class system in Canada, saying that people built themselves from nothing through hard work and that “there is probably no country on Earth where the people are more reasonably frugal.” He lamented that, due to the constant demand for workers, employees ruled their bosses “with a rod of iron” and said it was ridiculous to think that any employer could possibly be a tyrant.
On March 25, the printers went on strike. Brown and other MPA members recruited replacement workers from across the province, especially from small towns (the strikers’ allies called these people “country mice”). The TTU urged potential recruits to avoid travelling to Toronto. That’s because strike-friendly train conductors were tipping off a TTU vigilance committee, whose members would intercept the scabs, explain the situation, and escort them onto the next train back home. The MPA hired a detective to catch the vigilance committee in action and watch for signs of bribery or intimidation.
The only Toronto newspaper not to join the MPA was the Leader. Once the main Conservative alternative to the Liberal Globe, the paper had declined in influence and circulation; Prime Minister John A. Macdonald and other Conservatives were, in fact, preparing to launch a new paper. Publisher James Beaty, who also sat as a Conservative MP, was happy to see Brown squirm and increasingly alienate the working class. He printed letters from former Globe subscribers who had switched to the Leader and wrote editorials supporting the printers. A frequent speaker at pro-strike gatherings, Beaty believed that employers needed to pay higher wages so that top talent and skilled immigrants wouldn’t be lost to better-paying positions in the United States. Beaty may have also viewed the strike as a chance to revive the Leader’s fortunes and attract disgruntled printers from other publishers.
As April began, MPA members tried to frame the action as a failure, pointing out that newspapers were still being published with minimal interruption. But daily declarations that the strike was on the verge of collapse looked increasingly ridiculous.
The April 15 procession began at the Trades Assembly Hall on King Street at 1 p.m., drawing 2,000 marchers. Participants represented trades including bakers, bookbinders, bricklayers, cigar makers, iron workers, and machinists and were accompanied by banners and marching bands. They received cheers from onlookers along the route, which headed north on Yonge Street before turning west on College Street to Queen’s Park. As there were more than 10,000 people in the park, organizers decided to create two separate speaking areas for addresses from union activists, tradespeople, and supportive politicians.
Toronto Globe newspaper office on King Street East, Toronto, in the early 1860s. (Wikimedia Commons)
Perhaps this show of support drove Brown over the edge. The next day, he secured the arrest of the TTU’s strike committee on conspiracy charges. In response, a demonstration near St. Lawrence Market was quickly organized that night, drawing 4,000 protestors. When 13 printers had their court appearance, police magistrate Alexander Macnabb cleared the courtroom after the proceedings were disrupted by cheers from supporters of the defendants. He ruled that the union was illegal, but the case would be adjourned multiple times. Though the printers were free on bail, the Globe continued to call them “prisoners.”
On April 18, a group of printers associated with the TTU launched a new pro-labour weekly paper, the Ontario Workman. The same day, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald introduced the Trade Union Act, based on recent British legislation. It appeared that Macdonald had found a way to outwit long-time political rival Brown and build future working-class support for the Conservatives. One element of the legislation, the Criminal Law Amendment Act, may have soothed some employers by invoking penalties for any strikers who performed acts of intimidation or violence, effectively making demonstrations illegal. While labour leaders generally supported the Trade Union Act as a first step, they had hoped for something more than an imitation of current British law and criticized the amendment act.
In Hamilton, the Canadian Labor Protective and Mutual Improvement Association — made up of delegates representing that city along with Brantford, Dundas, Montreal, and Toronto — was established on May 3. On May 15, 1,500 workers participated in a procession through the industrial district of Hamilton. The MPA began disintegrating, as some members decried Brown’s heavy-handed tactics or reached agreements with their printers. The Leader had remained outside the MPA, as had Toronto’s new Conservative paper, the Mail. In a May 18 ruling, Macnabb stated that, while he believed the TTU printers should stand trial, the impending passage of the Trade Union Act would likely void such a verdict. On June 1, the TTU voted to return to work at the remaining members of the MPA. Plans for a general strike in June fizzled out.
Plaque commemorating the Nine Hour Movement and the Printers' Strike, on the east side of Queen’s Park Crescent. (Jamie Bradburn)
While the Trade Union Act allowed labour activity, many of the movement’s goals had still not been achieved. The country fell into an economic depression the following year, and the nine-hour day did not become universal. Membership in the TTU declined for a time as many of its members went elsewhere to work. The labour movement experienced a resurgence during the 1880s: more unions formed, more strikes occurred, and labour-reform organizations such as the Knights of Labor emerged. The processions witnessed during the nine-hour campaign and the printers’ strike can be seen as the forerunners of later Labour Day parades.
Macdonald attended a tribute from labour leaders at the Toronto Music Hall on July 11. He told the crowd that he was proud to have fought “the barbarous resurrection of a disgraceful old law” and drew parallels between his political track record and certain trades (when referring to Confederation, for example, he noted that he was “a pretty good joiner”). Four days later, the 1872 federal election campaign began. Though few working-class people possessed the right to vote, labour leaders stumped for Macdonald and the Conservatives (he returned the favour by keeping the Ontario Workman financially afloat). Beaty held on to his Toronto-area seat. After the Conservatives fell in the aftermath of the Pacific Scandal in 1873, Alexander Mackenzie’s Liberal government would revise the Criminal Law Amendment Act to allow picketing as long as it wasn’t obstructive.
Today, on the east side of Queen’s Park Crescent near the provincial legislature, a plaque commemorates the Nine Hour Movement and the Printer’s Strike. Across the street, George Brown’s statue faces the other direction.
Sources: Brown of the Globe Volume Two by J.M.S. Careless (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1963); The Canadian Labour Movement: A Brief History by Craig Heron (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1996); Toronto Workers Respond to Industrial Capitalism 1867-1892 by Gregory S, Kealey (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980); The Rise and Fall of the Toronto Typographical Union by Sally F. Zerker (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982); the December 1943 and June 1960 editions of the Canadian Historical Review; the March 22, 1872, March 23, 1872, April 2, 1872, and April 19, 1872, editions of the Globe; the 1979 annual volume of Labour; and the April 18, 1872, edition of the Ontario Workman.